I'd like my phone call, please.....

It's been a hectic few (10) days. Weddings, work, life.... I am planning a major move within the next 30 days and it has me stressed beyond belief. Finding a job, an apartment all of the things that make a life. I will admit that I am doing this the dumb way.. moving just to move, not for a job or school, but just because I need a change in life and I need to make a move. So that is what I'm doing. Going to a city that I love and that has more opportunity.

The job search is much harder than expected, and there is always the question of "am I doing the right thing?". This is when I would love to call my mom. It has been 12 years and I still get the urge to call her; when I'm bored, lonely, have had a terrible day at work, or most importantly now when I have no clue what I am doing in life.

I call these denial days.

Denial: Denial is a conscious or unconscious refusal to accept facts, information, reality, etc., relating to the situation concerned. It's a defence mechanism and perfectly natural. Some people can become locked in this stage when dealing with a traumatic change that can be ignored. Death of course is not particularly easy to avoid or evade indefinitely.

I am not in full denial, as in I am suddenly in belief that she is alive again, more so I feel as if I want it badly enough that if I just pick up that phone and dial she will answer. Some days it feels as if no one else will do. I have a great support system with amazing friends and a great boyfriend, extended family members and even a devoted dog who is always willing to lend an ear, but some days she is the only person that I want to say it all to.

Moms are supposed to be there for that. I could tell my mom anything and she would love me unconditionally no matter what it was. The answers or advice wouldn't have an agenda, or jealousy, or spite, just love and my best interest in the end. I've come across people in my life that don't necessarily come to your side without their own agenda. Life sort of unfolded like a soap opera after my mom died, and some scary sides came out in people, so the safe haven of my mom has been both treasured and missed since the day it went away.

For a few years after she died, and now even, I wish my dad had left her cell phone active. It sounds almost morbid, but just to be able to dial into her voicemail, hear her voice for that brief greeting, and just let her know what's going on. It could be as if, at her earliest convenience, she would check it and get the message. Needless to say her cell phone was shut off sometime after she died so I leave voicemails in the form of prayer I suppose. I also write to her, never tearing the letters out of my journals, but the thoughts are out of my head, and it helps.

No matter how many years pass or how "accepting" I am to the situation, I can't help but think still that I'd like my phone call, please.

Introduction to my thoughts on grief

Grief: a multi-faceted response to loss, particularly to the loss of someone or something to which a bond was formed.

Thank you wikipedia.org.

In the 1960's Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross introduced her "grief cycle" which consisted of 5 stages: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance.

The model was offered up as a way of explaining how and why "time heals" and how "life goes on", in her hopes to help people deal with death and bereavement a little easier.

When my mom died, over 12 years ago now, my dad used these "stages" as a way to cope and move on and prove that he was ready to "face the world again", as if grief was a "to-do" list to neatly check off until you could move on to the next chore. Within six months he had been in denial, felt angry, bargained, was depressed, and then accepted the events and had written himself a clean bill of mental health and kept it moving. After all, that's what his grief book told him he should do. (In retrospect this was a perfect tool for my poor father to cope. It was exactly what he needed to navigate this new hurdle in his life).

At the ripe and mature age of 13, my whole take on these stages...BULLSHIT.

There was no way that a time line existed for how I was going to feel and when. First of all, she died, I accepted it. As far as I was concerned I had to accept it every day I woke up. She wasn't there, how hard was that to accept? I didn't start out angry because what happened happened. People get cancer and die. It was awful that it happened to my mom (or anyone for that matter) but it happened, being angry was going to get me no where fast .

I later learned, though, that I was right about the grief cycle, at least in my understanding of it. I had to give Dr. Kubler-Ross some credit as I read on about her studies. She didn't bring this to the world as a process, but more of a model or framework. A process would have implied something fixed and consistent, whereas a model is more of a guide.

"People's grief is as individual as their fingerprint".

As with anyone who has lost someone so close, my mom's death has never left me. It is with me every day and affects me every day. My 20's have been harder than my teens in this respect. So being a writer, here I am. I have taken to a blog. This will be my almost day-to-day accounts of what stage of grief I am in according to my theory which is: grief is a cycle. It is a random, never-ending, some days good some days feel-like-shit, acceptance cycle that changes every single day. Today I was angry, tomorrow I could be in denial. Who knows?

It wont always be serious, sometimes funny, sometimes just ramblings of what goes through my mind. But here it is, My 5 Stage of Grief.

Kubler-Ross info taken from wikipedia and http://www.businessballs.com/elisabeth_kubler_ross_five_stages_of_grief.htm